The Kierkegaardian Eve Tushnet

Terrific post from Eve Tushnet on how bourgeois respectability is not the answer to the problem of hedonism — and how, despite what many of us social conservatives think, hedonism itself isn’t really our problem. Excerpt:

Conservatives often talk as if we’re combating hedonism and the solution is bourgeois normalcy. This makes our arguments look silly (everybody points out that “blue states” have lower divorce and teen pregnancy rates, or some other statistic indicating that they are winning on the bourgeois-normalcy front) and I think it probably makes our audience resentful. Nobody likes to be told that they’re not doing life right, but I think we especially feel indignant and even self-pityingly resentful when we’re working very, very hard to follow the rules and somebody comes along and tells us we’re just out for our own pleasure.

We don’t have a marriage crisis in this country because everybody has stopped following the rules. We have a marriage crisis because the rules don’t work. There are all kinds of strict rules: Don’t marry before you’re “economically stable” (an endlessly-retreating horizon), don’t wait until you’re married to have sex, don’t wait until you’re married to live together, don’t move back in with your parents. And, for the upper classes, don’t have kids too early and don’t have too many. I’ve written about these issues before (here and here) but I want to emphasize how the rules rely on completely bourgeois impulses to achieve and preserve. They’re based on fear–primarily fear of divorce, but also fear of loneliness–but also on the intense, poignant desire to do the right thing.

Eve is making a very Kierkegaardian point about how a bourgeois ethic of duty and responsibility can in fact be just as much a way of escaping ourselves and wholeness in the sight of God than living a life of bohemian self-indulgence. It may make for a more stable society, but that doesn’t make it true, or satisfying to our deepest longings and nature. She suggests a very Kierkegaardian solution: a life of faith. But being a disciple isn’t the same thing as being a good middle-class follower of the rules. (Nor, it should be said, do the “rules” not matter; that is, you don’t get to do whatever you like and say it’s okay because you’re not one of those stiff, moralistic middle-class Christians — and please understand that Eve is not saying this!)

Tell us more about this, Eve. This is a rich post, and I’d love to know more of You should write a book about this. Seriously. These lines are great:

I don’t know that I have “solutions” really. You can’t solve somebody’s heart.

It sounds like you’re saying that bourgeois respectability is a big part of the problem, because what counts as respectable middle-class behavior is structured to incentivize hedonism of a certain kind. That’s a terrific counterintuitive insight, and I’d like to hear more from you on this point.

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43 Responses to The Kierkegaardian Eve Tushnet

When Sarah Palin burst out onto the national stage, along with a rather pregnant teenage daughter–there seemed to be more freaking out about this among the blue-state set than the red. Political allegiance may be part of this–would conservatives had been as understanding were a young Chelsea Clinton, or one of Obama’s daughters, to be knocked up?–but in many poor rural white communities (where economic prospects are dim), teenage pregnancy is not that uncommon, whereas in upper-middle-class society, where an unplanned and early pregnancy may interfere with plans for a higher education and/or professional career, it tends to be regarded as a Bigger Deal; even though bourgeois sexual mores are more tolerant.

She’s correct that there are still all kinds of rules. But she fails to note exactly why the rules have shifted. The rules are now about how to get this worldly pleasure. They may have learned to that it is best to pursue it prudently, of course, but still in the end life is just about utility. So, in that sense it is entirely correct to describe modern mores as hedonistic, however cautiously so. As Jonathan Haidt has noted, liberal morality is all about harm and fairness. All that matters is pleasure and how you distribute it.

BTW marriage stats of liberal voting places seem to be entirely based on the lateness of marriages there. Marriages are less likely to implode when there are not really any good alternatives/temptations out there to lure you away.

Lower out of wedlock births in liberal places seem entirely due to higher rates of abortion.

Maybe we should consider the possibility that (due to Original Sin and maybe our own incompleteness) it really is not possibly to be happy (in the old philosophical sense) in this world.
And while I will firmly agree that respectability is not a synonym for virtue, a stable society is not something to dismiss out of hand because it isn’t virtue as St Francis of Assisi perceived it. For most people it may be the best they can realistically aspire to.
As for hedonism, the goal of life is not pleasure, but surely we can indulge a bit in some pleasures provided we do not make idols of such things.

I read Eve’s article, and not only don’t I know what she’s talking about, I’m pretty certain she doesn’t either.

I was a big fan of Kierkegaard’s at one time in my youth, and still admire him, but honestly, didn’t he do all the basic “right” things himself? Including, being a bit of a hedonist also?

Eve doesn’t really know what to do or recommend, or even what “discipleship” means, because it’s really hard to prescribe one solution that fits all. That just never, ever works. Life is an adventure, and everyone has to figure out how to get through it as best they can. Of course bourgeois respectability isn’t a sure-fire path to happiness. This is news? Of course some people mess up, and never find the happiness or beauty or love they sought or expected. Life is tragic, get hip to that. And that of course is part of its beauty. If we only imagine that beauty consists of life turning out as we wished it would – and this applies to everyone and everything – we are missing out on the real beauty of life, which is also found in our failure and despair. That’s what you need to take from Kierkegaard.

Rod, may I suggest that you and Eve read Darryl Hart’s essay, “The Relevance of J. Gresham Machen”, in the current issue (Sept/Oct 2012) of THEOLOGY MATTERS. In it he discusses how the author of “Christianity and Liberalism”, the intellectual defense of Reformed Orthodoxy in the Fundamentalist/Modernist Controversy of the 1920’s, was never quite at home among the Christan Fundamentalists of his day, but gave an irrefutable critique of the forces of Modernism and, more particularly, those who tolerated Modernism in the Presbyterian Church that still has relevance today, although the particular questions of that era (defense of Christ’s bodily resurrection and the Virgin Birth) don’t animate much intellectual debate today. Machen’s critique of the driving forces in the Presbyterian and other mainline churches early in the Twentieth Century was that by transforming the primary role of the Church from the proclamation of the Gospel (with its “scandal of particularity) into the moral reformation of American society and through it, the world, they had adopted a religion which was something other than Christianity. Using the slogan “Mission unites, Theology divides”, the mainstream patriarchs had escaped controversy with their academic and cultural peers, but set in motion a course of theological laxity that would turn the Church into the equivalent of any secular agency of social improvement.

Nearly a century later that critique has certainly born itself out, but what is more remarkable is that today the Evangelical Church, with its emphasis on a political agenda of pushing for laws to “protect marriage”, “unborn life”, to punish sexual deviancy and the like, has simply chosen to tread the same path trod by their Progressive forbearers, who lobbied for the abolition of slavery, the rights of women, better wages and working conditions, prohibition of alcohol, and, of course, the projection of military power into the world to help establish “The Christian Century”. In a day when the Vatican of evangelical Christianity, the Billy Graham Ministries of Montreat, NC, have issued an edict that the differences in theological teaching between Christianity and Mormonism are no longer a matter which need be taken seriously, one wonders what the Lord has in store for the future of Evangelicalism.

Machen, no doubt the best respected champion of the Fundamentalism of his day, was also one of the staunchest advocates for the religious liberty of non-Christians.

So, as a fan of Machen, I am pleased that you and Eve have presented the question, what is the true mission of the Church – to seek to make the world safe for bourgeois respectability, or to the proclaim the gracious message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?

Thursday, abortion rates aren’t really correlated to red states versus blue states. Below is a heat map showing the rate by state. For example Texas and Massachusetts have the same color, so do Maine and Alabama.

If I had to guess, I would suggest that the rates are correlated to the presence of large cities (e. g. Miami in Florida, NYC in NY). Although New Jersey is a bit of an outlier, I blame Jersey Shore for that.

Eve raises an excellent set of issues, but in our modern world an economy, we are completely at a loss about how to conceive of a solution. I doubt we even have the vocabulary.

The best I can point to is societies where a “job” as we know it today was more of a temporary thing pursued for a specific and time-limited purpose (for example saving up money for your sister’s dowry or to purchase land before moving back to your home), akin to a stint in the military. A “profession” was more of a pursuit of smart eccentrics. Money from local “work” was more of a stipend and provision of a place to live which you could depend on indefinitely. There’s something Wendell Berry-esque of the world that would make Eve’s ideas plausible. We definitely need to talk about her ideas more in order to better develop the vocabulary of what she means.

BTW marriage stats of liberal voting places seem to be entirely based on the lateness of marriages there. Marriages are less likely to implode when there are not really any good alternatives/temptations out there to lure you away.

The age means we come into marriages more mature and better able to make decisions, and our decisions to marry were more deliberate. The alternatives/temptations are always there, especially for us in blue states, since we are comparatively better looking, thinner, and wealthier.

William Dalton,
You’ve definitely made me was to read Hart’s essay on Machen.

A side question – you mentioned the Graham ministries and their statement about differences in theological teaching between Mormonism and Christianity. Is what they said available online? Do you have a link?

I read Eve’s article, and not only don’t I know what she’s talking about, I’m pretty certain she doesn’t either.

Exactly what I thought. I’m not sure what certain conservative see in Tushnet’s navel-gazing nonsense, other than she’s the official celibate Catholic homosexual that they feel like they have to support to as a counter to Andrew Sullivan’s rantings.

If you want people to marry when they get pregnant and/or to marry younger than life as a blue-collar worker has to be accepted as socially valid. The Republican party has VERY VERY VERY agressively endorsed a social darwinism where workers are disdained. If people many of us simply say “yes well that’s the Republicans I’M AN INDEPENDENT, I can’t control what THEY do” the only reasonable response is to embrace the party that at least pretends to care about laborers, socialist or not.

This is btw why the current GOP is NOT going to win the latino vote. The Latino vote is never going to go to a party that regards labor with contempt amnesty or no, Marco Rubio or no.

I think in the end what bothers folks like Eve is that we really do get to make most of our own rules as long as we don’t rob banks for a living, and don’t really lose any sleep over hers. And besides, I’ve always considered Kierkegarrd to be the most god-awful bore and can never understand why he was taken seriously.

I did find the one about marrying someone our parents approve of rather funny. Who really cares about who their parents approve of now? I know I never would have even given it a thought, and in their own lives my parents did not care, they just got married and told their respective families to like it or stuff it because neither family approved of the other partner, as if they actually had anything ot say in the matter. It was a reality the families had to learn to live with. My mother’s family did with no trouble. My father’s family, not so much and my father quietly despised them for it. (After his brother-in-law, who was his good friend died, my mother asked him why he never went to see his sisters. He answered, “I don’t have any sisters. I only put with them for Vito.”)

Life is much more complicated than folks like Eve seem to be capable of figuring out.

I hope, Rod, you read what Tushnet wrote very carefully — the bourgeois normalcy, the life of achieving and preserving, is not what Jesus Christ did in his life, death and resurrection, and it is most definitely NOT what Jesus commission the church to do. (Too often, you write as if it is.) Such a view is church is almost entirely utilitarian, and essentially has the church’s sole function become chaplain to the bourgeois, to comfort and protect them as a class and community but never ask them any hard questions or to do anything difficult. (Such as: give everything you own to the poor and follow Jesus. Or simply leave everything behind — boat, fishnets, family, tax collector gig — to follow Jesus.) And to those who are not properly bourgeois, for whatever reason, the church is nanny and enforcer, sometimes compassionate caregiver and other times exhorting and cajoling people to live well-ordered bourgeois lives for their own good and the good of the community. There may be some very good reasons for living a good, well-ordered bourgeois life. But some people, perhaps many, are not called to that life. And regardless of how well most people might thrive under such circumstances (though note: some won’t, because well-ordered bourgeois life can be incredibly stifling), well-ordered bourgeois life is not the Kingdom of God and it is not the Church’s calling to subsidize, support and promote such a way of life.

The Gospel is not about achieving and preserving anything except the Kingdom of God. Which is achieved and preserved in ways that go counter to human wisdom. We participate in the Kingdom of God when we do foolish things in its behalf, take risks with life and wealth in ways that are absurd and often times apparently foolish. When we trust the work of the Holy Spirit rather than our own facts, figures and accumulated resources. I’m not saying you can build a society on these ideas, or govern a community, or manage a nation-state. But those things aren’t the church’s calling either. The church is called to be the church, the body of Christ in the world. Not to govern it. To to manage it. Not even to influence it or have a say. We are called to show the world that God so loves it, and in that love has not abandoned it. No matter what circumstances people find themselves in or how they live.

I really like this piece and am glad you highlighted it. My sense is that Tushnet sees THE alternative as a life of faith — she has made herself a kind of symbol in that way, through her much-publicized single chaste lesbian persona — and it is indeed a good alternative. It’s never going to be the alternative for everyone, though, any more than all people will become hermits or saints. I’m glad Eve Tushnet is out there, writing and sublimating. She should know — and I’m sure she does know! — that us capitalists, caretakers, consumers, drunks, groupies, middle managers, stay-at-home moms, public sector union members, and all the bourgeois vulgar middle-class rest of us will always be around, too, just like the poor.

Eve doesn’t really know what to do or recommend, or even what “discipleship” means, because it’s really hard to prescribe one solution that fits all.

I beg to differ; there is indeed “one solution that fits all” and I am pretty sure that Eve would agree with me as to what it is. The “one solution that fits all” is to put one’s faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, to strive to live according to His commandments, to cleave to His Church and immerse oneself in the Church’s life of Word and Sacrament. Those are the basics of “discipleship,” and though there is an infinite variety of vocations and lifestyles, any spiritually healthy way of living is some variant on that basic discipleship.

I’ve been reading through the Gospels lately and, boy, this series of posts seems to reflect the Pharisees’ obsession with outward behavior. They wanted to display their own ability to conform to the rules more than they wanted to relate to a personal God – a God so personal that he was willing to come and walk among them.

I’m also reminded of the story of the sisters Mary and Martha. Martha invited Jesus to her home and was very concerned about playing the role of the perfect hostess. Mary, though, wasn’t willing to help her sister with the preparations because she just wanted to sit at Jesus’ feet and take in what he had to say. Jesus gently reminds Martha that it is better for Mary to relate to him than to obsess over the social details.

I am an Evangelical, but perhaps my biggest concern with my branch of Christianity is our obsession with outward appearance over a life-transforming, joy-filled interaction with our Creator. Such interactions are almost always messy, but I fear that we are too concerned with conservative Americana to actually relate to God. I constantly beg that God would save my family and me from this.

When we are touched by the Holy Spirit, we enter into a lifetime process of being made more and more like Christ. More patient, loving, kind, wise, etc. In this way, the issues Eve mentions get taken care of by the Holy Spirit. She’s right: our souls must change.

When Church Lady says she doesn’t know what Eve is talking about, I take Church Lady at her word. Each of us is the ultimate expert on our own minds. Even a therapist doesn’t have a clue what is going on, unless the patient talks, at some length.

However, as a heterodox Christian who grew up on “Why can’t we go on as three” and “We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall,” and belatedly noticed that there are a complex web of mutual responsibilities rather neatly framed by marriage, I can at least dimly perceive some meaning in what Eve wrote, so I suspect she knows what she is talking about.

I have come up with an approximate answer to the dislocations Eve is talking about, but this is probably wholly unrealistic:

We need to close the gap between age of puberty and age of financial independence, by encouraging men and women in their late teens or early twenties to marry, after some due consideration that this is a life-long partnership, with a safety valve in the divorce laws, but only a safety valve.

This requires a massive overhaul of capitalist labor market priorities. These newlyweds and new parents need to be able to work part time, continue their education part time, not worry about getting a head start on the career and promotion track, and have a web of community and family support raising the children.

Then as the children reach their teen years, parents start moving on to full time work, equipped with degrees or trade apprentice certifications earned over 8-10 years. As the kids start marrying, parents move into peak career years, and in retirement, help take care of great-grandchildren.

Conservatives committed to “the market” as their god can never solve this one.

I really didn’t like the “can’t solve somebody’s heart” line. Nobody’s asking for a solution like that, and you don’t need it anyway.

The need is for achievable solutions, cultural and possibly even political (laws and stuff), that will make it possible for people to live better lives, regarding sex, marriage, and family, among other things (whatever “better” means). This, without getting sucked into Michael Lerner’s/Hillary Clinton’s “politics of meaning.”

Personally, I’m more partial to Eve Tushnet’s way of looking at life, but I don’t think it’ll be relevant. Right now, the evangelicals seem to be the only game in town.

Has anyone read any of the research on brain imaging scans and the differences between liberal and conservative brains?

Brain, Politics, & Emotions: How We Vote
“We all would agree that liberals and conservatives think differently when it comes to their political views and their ideal choice for candidate for office, but do their brains function differently? A growing body of evidence from social neuroscience says that it might just be the case, and the reason for this has to do with how the emotional brains of liberals and conservatives respond differently to political information.”

“Recent developments in brain imaging scans indicate that it is your emotional brain, and not your rational brain, that ultimately makes decisions on whom you marry, what brand of cereal you buy, the movies you see, and even the final choices you make in the voting booth.”

“The reason why your emotions play such a crucial role in political elections is due to a concept known as the unconscious confirmation bias. Basically put, when your brain has made an opinion or already reached an unconscious decision, it will then employ the rational brain to gather selective facts and figures as evidence to support your decisions and validate your beliefs. … As a result, this reason accounts for why both liberals and conservatives become equally convinced that existing evidence validates their fundamental respective views.”

I beg to differ; there is indeed “one solution that fits all” and I am pretty sure that Eve would agree with me as to what it is. The “one solution that fits all” is to put one’s faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, to strive to live according to His commandments, to cleave to His Church and immerse oneself in the Church’s life of Word and Sacrament.

Well said, but…

…This lofty sentiment could be exemplified in the life of Torqemada, St. Francis of Assissi, Francisco Franco, Archbishop Dom Helder Camarra, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Starr King (the Unitarian missionary to California, back in the day), Bill Graham, and no doubt the Lord’s Resistance Army (Uganda) and the Army of God (USA) believe they are doing the same. So short of Aslan coming back to set things right in Narnia, we seem to have a plethora of sharply inconsistent visions arising from the “one solution” that not only “fits all” but is adaptable to all.

And of course, a discipline with any clarity wouldn’t be so malleable. I suppose the vision of the Roman and Orthodox variants of Christianity are intended to provide the clarity and discipline, but with Pope Alexander Borgia in the mix, and the cover-up for pedophile priests, one questions whether the discipline adheres to a moral vision with any clarity.

Re: We need to close the gap between age of puberty and age of financial independence, by encouraging men and women in their late teens or early twenties to marry,

Why? If people are marrying later in life, but their marriages are more stable and lasting, isn’t that a good thing? And historically most people outside the elite class did not marry until they were into their 20s (men especially). Plato and Aristotle both agreed that women should not begin child bearing until they were past the age of 20, and “Marry in haste, repent at leisure” was a medieval aphorism. The immediate post WWII period when many people married right out of high school was an anomaly, not the norm.

I never like Tushnet’s shtick of Christianity being more bohemian than “Bohemia” itself. As if a “radical faith commitment” wasn’t doing anything but being the “exception proving the rule”. I was in the Catholic traditionalist movement for a few years, as a lay oblate and seminarian, and I can tell you that in spite of their having eight kids and driving a big white van, those people are about as bourgeois as you get. Oh, and the number of Benzes and SUV’s doesn’t lie either. The fact is, the exception of the few “struggling” families among them is a needed trope to their narrative, as are their “intentional communities” (such as St. Mary’s, Kansas) that prove to be bastions of traddie social capital. Ultimately, none of these people expect most to take them seriously concerning masses of young people getting hitched right out of high school and having a zillion kids. Perhaps they are dreaming of a lily-white Catholic ghetto, but considering that those who do live like this are regularly chastised by the rest of the populace, I don’t believe anyone takes that dream seriously.

The best popular discussion of the combination of hedonism and bourgeois values is David Brooks, “Bobos in Paradise” (2000). A more thorough and academic study is Colin Campbell, “The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism” (1987). I suspect you have read the former which perhaps bears a re-read. Campbell’s work, except for the last chapter, is excellent.

The “one solution that fits all” is to put one’s faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, to strive to live according to His commandments, to cleave to His Church and immerse oneself in the Church’s life of Word and Sacrament. Those are the basics of “discipleship,” and though there is an infinite variety of vocations and lifestyles, any spiritually healthy way of living is some variant on that basic discipleship.

If one is a Christian, of course the theological solution is clear; it’s the life-level particulars that are not.

Discipleship refers to the life one leads if one is a Christian. This has no fixed route, even within the various “vocations”. Many Christians are raised to think all is simple and ordained in a certain way. As one grows up, one finds out this is not the case, and that Christ has left much of the living open-ended, for us to discover. Trying to turn a few words of scripture here and there into a fixed doctrine of how one lives in the flesh creates endless troubles and conflict, and quite a lot of violent death, or just frustration. As Siarlys’ list of “disciples” shows, the ways in which even these can and have been interpreted are simply mind-boggling, and often horrifying. And it’s a much longer list in reality, even today.

The reason Eve doesn’t know what she’s talking about, is that no one does, even though quite a few think they do and are more than happy to poke your eye out to help you see things their way. Discipleship isn’t a life-plan, it’s a relationship.

One of her initial assumptions is that hedonism is a problem. But I would challenge her to be more specific about how she defines the term and how is it a problem?

The reason I ask is that whenever I tour historical sites in New England, I get the distinct impression that the Puritans thought everything other than church was hedonism.

For example they imported iron workers as indentured servants who weren’t Puritans because they didn’t know how to work iron. They then expected these people to live by their austere rules, and we have the court records for when they often failed to do so.

To me a man willing to risk life and limb working around molten iron without modern safety equipment could not be a hedonist in the judgment of a sane man. But the Puritans stuck me as loonies.

Now if you define it as pursuing pleasure without forethought about possible repercussions then that strikes me as more reasonable.

Only at first glance, that’s why I paired a few deep blue states with a few deep red states in my post. You can find more as you look at it. The thing that jumps out is that the states with the lowest rates are some of the least populated or have smaller cities. If I were a sociologist I think the demographics of abortion would likely be interesting area to research.

well, I’ll make my pitch on the pitfalls of aesthetes again here
I can’t equate a tepid bourgois with steamy hedonism, IHMO the issue is the error of Epicurianism or ‘appearances can be deceptive’. Those who would identify this pleasure (ie a comfort-seeking appreciation for the good taste of ‘people like us’) with the practice of virtue (which is anything but comfortable, exerting one’s faculties publically for the good of all warts and all) harm the culture. Sully’s “View from my window” (and its mimetic cousins published here under VFYT) falls into the category of comfort-seeking behaviour IMHO. GK Chesteron I believe nailed it: ‘if a things worth doing, its worth doing badly’. Eve is correct that fear is the hurdle that keeps so many from atempting the worthy thing, to be judged in the court of public opinion as louch or uncouth.
Exhibit #1: Epicurian of human events Ann Coulter can’t bring herself to associate with a particular human event, the voiceless soul of the baby conceived in violence http://www.humanevents.com/2012/11/07/ann-coulter-dont-blame-romney/
for fear that her paying friends on the publicity circuit might cancel her speaker fees. Well luckily Fordham is more fearless —http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/11/fordham-republicans-cancel-appearance-by-ann-coulter-as-school-president-slams-invitation/
she’s outta there, pronto!

MH re: are you being ironic with “I think the demographics of abortion would likely be interesting area to research.” ?
If not, please let us know how you would count the constituency under study?
When the life of a gestating child can be foreshortened from 9 months prior to parturition the it can be replaced within 1 month with another life of a gestating child can be foreshortened from 9 months prior to parturition and so on.

Every human comes into existence by the coitus of a couple who are fertile (10 – 20% of time as the world turns the moon directs their fecundity, unless the adulterate their union and thwart ‘au clair de lune’) or action that would mimic that in a petri dish.

Would your demographics count how many developing lives are lost ecologically from spontaneous abortion, known as miscarriage and/or include those lost to an imbalanced human ecology that creates gestations but restricts progeny?

The data I fear wouldn’t answer your ethical problem – for its not a scientific question. Its an existential, metaphysical one. When did we become ‘a progeny’ and stop being a gestation?

That data point is hidden from view. that thought lies in the mind of our parents: when a certain ‘ clair de la lune’ announced a missing synchronicity (describing the science if you will of a new human being). A certain feminine clarity then illuminated a male occluded obliviousness to the arrival of new creature. In Roman times, pagan parents reserved the decision of accepting the science until after birth, an undesirable scientific outcome (aka a child) was “exposed” if his father didn’t accept the illuminating gift offered by his concubine wife.

The data you want is in the hearts and minds of sexually active persons – do they want to create new life? Obviously gay unions go against the needed scienfic prerequisites since the elusive ‘clair de lune’ does not compute. While scientifically their contribution may be null and void, metaphysically gays can still occasion abortions – if they agree to eugenic surrogacy (ie gestation foreshortened if progeny doesn’t fit the procurement criteria, see text of contract for grandchild born to Mitt Romney’s son)

The discipline of demographics cannot help the voiceless.
The discipline needed is personal discernment of those who create the new vocal chords. Concord or discord, to be or not to be, that is the question!

Clare Krishan, I’m not being ironic, although my statement was poorly worded. Nor would I be particularly interested in solving thorny ethical issues. People keep making assumptions about who’s having abortions and why. It would be interesting to finally know and end the speculation.

I might also add that Eve is, in her own way, pointing out that the conservative “solution” for gays, which she lives, is itself sticking a thumb in the eye of conservative norms. Haidt’s conception of conservative morality would demand that everyone in America either achieve bourgeois middle class norms or at the very least accept their inferior status on the social hierarchy below those with a spouse and children in the suburbs. Eve is effectively saying to that, “screw you. Not only am I not doing that, that life is orthogonal to seeking the kingdom of God, which is the best thing to do in life.”

That said, Eve is young and really trying to figure out her place in the world. She doesn’t have a good answer because she is still figuring it out herself.

Oh please. Nobody wants to have an affair with your wrinkly old asses no matter how much you go to the gym.

General David Petraeus would like to speak with you about that.

I was being facetious and needling you about the higher standard of living in Blue States, but on another level, people find themselves all sorts of temptations at their own level. Heck, the mother on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo has a boyfriend.

Yeah, no one’s ever heard of older married men having affairs, or leaving their wives for younger women. Heck, Newt Gingrich has traded in an older wife for a younger, prettier model how many times now? And then there’s Rush Limbaugh, serial divorcee and no paragon of good looks himself. Hm, perhaps appearance isn’t always the most important aspect that women look for in a potential mate…

It’s basically accepted wisdom that later-in-life marriages are generally more successful because the partners are more financially secure (stress from financial issues is, IIRC, one of the leading causes of failed marriages) and have a better idea of what they’re looking for in a mate.

Since some people apparently didn’t read the Tushnet article, let alone follow the further links, let me point out a couple of things:

1. She never mentioned Kierkegaard. That was Rod.
2. Here’s the key point of her post: that modern mainstream society has numerous very strict rules about love and marriage. They include:

a. Don’t marry before you’re “economically stable” (an endlessly-retreating horizon),
b. don’t wait until you’re married to have sex,
c. don’t wait until you’re married to live together,
d. don’t move back in with your parents.
e. And, for the upper classes, don’t have kids too early and f. don’t have too many.

3. These rules are, of course different from those taught by Christianity. But people who follow these rules often do so at considerable cost and sacrifice to themselves, and so should never be scorned or despised as being merely morally lazy or slackers.

that modern mainstream society has numerous very strict rules about love and marriage.

You’re missing the larger point about her post, which is that those rules are rules for ensuring social stability and for the “protection of families.” Sounds good, right? But those rules have nothing to do with Christianity and those rules don’t apply to many people. If you’re hetereosexual, educated, and have a decent career that will keep you employed over the long term, those rules work out great for you. Not everyone is on the middle class married white collar career track. OBVIOUSLY Christianity has a place for them in the moral universe. Our society, however, is having trouble articulating a place for them that is also compatible with Christianity.

She can’t articulate it either. But she’s doing better than Maggie Gallagher and others who are saying that the solution for everyone is to get married and have children and Charles Murray, who insists it is a moral failing that people don’t work 40 hours a week.

Tyro, thanks for your summary of the linked article. I read it and she was much less coherent than you.

This might tie into the rise of the nones. If you feel that a religion is not for people like you, then obviously you’ll drop out. That rise started in the early 90’s, right around the time free trade really kicked into high gear. Irreligion has risen rapidly among the under 30 crowd who also have the bad luck of becoming adults in the worst economy since the great depression.

Jon F, you have half a point, but is there any evidence that people lived their lives as Plato and Aristotle advised?

At the time of the American Revolution, it was not uncommon for women to marry at 15-18. Men often waited until they could prove to a skeptical father how they would support their wife, but in the meantime, a good deal of dalliance was tolerated (by the men, not the women, but then, somehow the men found women to dally with…)

I think you have it backwards about the non-aristocratic classes waiting to marry. Even in the early 1970s, I recall many marriage notices for my high school classmates, published during the spring of our senior year.

Waiting ten years after puberty to marry is asking for a great deal of fornication, if one cares to use that term, which in turn reduces the dignity of marriage when one finally arrives.

Of course the fortitude and self-discipline to spend ten years in a gradual process of chastely getting to know each other is admirable… but how many have the patience to adhere to it.

I think my proposal is unrealistic because it would take an overhaul of our economics, culture, and governance on a truly socialist scale to set in place the support networks and safety nets that would allow young adults to work, raise children, and advance their education all at once. So many of our cultural imperatives would have to change.

That, however, poses a challenge to those who advocate that marriage has an intrinsic meaning, as well as to advocated of unrestrained hedonism.